of obtaining some
information that might throw light upon his fate. But his journeys then
were as fruitless as his former inquiries.

We must here introduce another character to our readers, in the person
of Sandy Reed. At the period at which we introduce him, he was a
widower, between forty and fifty years of age, with an only daughter,
named Anne, a child of five years old; and his house was kept by a
maiden aunt, who was on the aged side of sixty. Sandy was a farmer near
the Reed water, in Northumberland, and as fine a specimen of the ancient
Northumbrian farmer as could be met with--a distinct race, a few samples
of whom were here and there to be found within the last thirty
years--free, careless, hospitable, happy, boisterous, unlettered, and
half-civilized. Sandy was one of these in their primitive state. He was
in truth--

"A fine old English farmer,
One of the olden time."

He was as hardy as the hills on which his sheep fed. He was ready at all
times either to shake hands or to break a head--to give or to take. No
one ever entered his house and went out hungry. He had a bed, a bite,
and a bottle for every one; and he was wont to say that he would rather
treat a beggar than lose good company. He was no respecter of rank, nor
did he understand much concerning it. He judged of the respect due to
every one by what he called the "rule of good fellows." Burns makes the
wife of Tam o' Shanter say--

"Ilka horse ye ca'ed a shoe on,
The smith and you gat roarin' fu' on."

But Tam had been but the degenerated shadow of Sandy Reed; for every
time he had to pay a visit to the smith with his nag, they would have

"Been fu' for weeks thegither!"

When he had business at Morpeth market, his journey home never occupied
less than a fortnight, though the distance was not quite thirty miles;
for the worthy farmer had to stop three or four days at every hostelry
by the way, for the sake of company, as he affirmed, and the good of the
road; but he cared not much for going half-a-dozen miles out of his way
to add another house of entertainment to the number; and it mattered not
to him whether the company he met with were Roundheads or Cavaliers,
provided they could show the heel-taps of their bottle, and in the
intervals of bringing in a new one, wrestle, run, leap, or put, or
quarrel in a friendly way, if they preferred it.

But we shall record a portion of Sandy's adventures, so far as they are
conn